1st Day of 5th Grade

School begins in just a few short hours.  Blessedly, Eli is sleeping!

Mommy....is not.

The last couple weeks have been a transition for E, as he has come from "NO! NOT SCHOOL! NO NO NO NO NO NO....!!!" to "....shrug...I'm kinda ready, kinda not..."  to  "It'll be nice to see my friends again."

He doesn't want to talk about school.  That's hard for me.  To me, if there's a problem, then we need to sit down and talk it all out, so Eli can be heard and comforted and supported and encouraged.

Eli wants no part of that.

The autism prevents him from being able to wrap his head around specifically what is bothering him.  He knows when he thinks about school that he's feeling yucky inside.  But he can't pinpoint specifically what he's feeling anxious about and then put it into words to express what he is feeling, let alone why he's feeling that way.

But Eli's done a lot of internal preparation over the last two weeks on his own.  He started out very nasty.  Hateful, even.  Verbally lashing out at immediate family members, screaming at the dog when she frustrated him, going from even-keel to instant anger and then, being so overwhelmed, that he's just shut down for an hour or more, sometimes hiding, sometimes just brooding and not talking but still in the same room. Eli's told us before that at times like this he just needs time and space....don't touch him, don't try to talk to him, just let him have the time he needs to calm down.  So that's what we've tried to do.

Over the past five days or so, he's spent an impressive number of hours swinging on the porch swing, lost in "his game"... best I can describe His Game is that when he was little, and completely obsessed with Star Wars, he began a game in his head.   He would run in circles on our bed and have this magnificent battle scene going on in his head.  He would literally do this for an hour or more and you didn't dare interrupt him when he was immersed in his game or he would become intensely upset.

Needless to say, when we got a new bed last year, E was fairly devastated when he learned he would no longer be able to run in circles on it.  But he's found other locations in which to play his game, and one of his favorites - at least during the warmer months - is to sit on the porch swing and lose himself entirely in the game.

His Game is a huge comfort to Eli...he loses himself completely in the world he has created.  I'm not sure it's Star Wars any longer...I think it's progressed beyond that to detailed worlds and characters of his own creation, but I know there are still battles being waged from the sounds he makes.  Over the past week, he's disappeared into His Game over and over to comfort himself and as a way to deal with the anxiety of the new school year.  When Eli's here at home, he knows he is safe to go to that other world he has created.  It's just a part of who Eli is, he knows he is accepted here.

Two new pair of soft jammies and a new bedtime routine of reading with 'Mimmy' (Mommy - me) have been a big comfort to him as well.  The reading has become something he's insisting on, so we have had to make a time allotment for it.  If it comforts and calms him, and helps him to sleep, then I'm fine with working it in.  I wonder if it will last the entire school year or, once he settles in to 5th grade and the fear of the newness of it all begins to fade away, if he'll discard the reading time?  It will be interesting to see what morning routines he establishes for himself to cope with a new school year.  Will they be the same as last year's routines, or will they be new?

Will he continue to have sleepless nights?  Or will the school days exhaust him so he can sleep as well as he used to?

I think my own anxiety and sleepless night is being fueled by these questions, but even more by, Will his teachers love, tolerate, help, and work with him as much as last year's teachers?

As always we will strive to take one day at a time and lean on The Father for our strength and endurance, and trust that we will be shown the way to proceed to help Eli learn the skills he needs to cope with everyday life and the world around him.

Right now, I'm going to proceed back to bed and see if I can manage 4 hours of sleep before the alarm screams at me.  Keep my little man in your thoughts and prayers tomorrow as he begins his first day of 5th grade.